As dawn broke over the UK Friday, Britons woke to the tremors of a political quake the likes of which most had never felt before.
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Political commentators have suggested this is because the political landscape in Scotland is set further to the left than in the rest of the UK.
The referendum was the climax of months of angry posturing over its future inside or outside of the EU. Northern Ireland voted strongly in favor of Remain, and no wonder. Orkney became the first Scottish area to declare its result at about 12.05 a.m., with “Remain” winning 7,189 votes (63 per cent) and “Leave” on 4,193 (37 per cent).
In 2014, the people of Scotland had to decide whether to remain part of the United Kingdom or to go it alone as an independent country. Brussels and all that has gone wrong. “Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day”.
Unlike at a general election the results in individual areas do not count – it is the overall number of votes cast for one side or the other across the country that will determine whether Britain leaves the EU.
“It’s a catastrophe… for Europe”, he told CNN.
Posted to Change.org, O’Malley’s petition declared: “London is an global city, and we want to remain at the heart of Europe”.
And the repercussions could affect Britain’s own union too.
“They backed hope, they backed aspiration, they backed the future potential of the United Kingdom and I’m very pleased with the result”.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said there were a “lot of very happy, very confident Remain activists” in Scotland. “There are so many unknowns”.
This was the final result.
That gap was also apparent during the referendum campaign, with members of the “Leave” team accusing the capital’s “elite” of being out of touch with what Nigel Farage called “real people… ordinary people… decent people”.
Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union has pitted parents against children, cities against rural areas, north against south and university graduates against those with fewer qualifications.
“Clearly they’ve misled the Scottish people”, he said.
Opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn was widely criticised for his lukewarm campaigning for Remain, and failing to reach out and persuade working class Labour voters who opted for Leave in droves.
Former First Minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond, the architect of the 2014 independence referendum that ended in defeat for the nationalists, warned a second ballot was likely if the country is “dragged” out of the EU.
With a 64% turnout 27,262 people voted to leave the European Union while 24,550 voted to remain.
“If all the leavers are about self-government, and taking back control, why shouldn’t Scotland take back control?” Scottish and Northern Irish nationalist politicians said it underlined just how different they were, while a Spanish official said Madrid would seek “co-sovereignty” of Gibraltar on the Spanish coast.
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Before the referendum, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, told the Guardian newspaper there was a “democratic imperative” to allow voters in the region to vote on a united Ireland.
